Abstract: Due in large part to the overlapping layers of federal, state, and local
governments, the United States holds more elections than any other industrialized
democracy in the world. Perhaps as a result, the U.S. also consistently has the lowest
voter turnout of these countries. The importance of mobilizing supporters has long been
recognized in conventional political wisdom, but until recently relatively little research
had been done into which methods are actually effective at getting out the vote.
The extant research tends to focus on the methods used to reach voters (e.g., doorto-
door canvassing, direct mail, telephone calls, etc.) and has dealt with the message of
the GOTV appeals only as an afterthought. As such, while good information is available
regarding the efficacy of different modalities, the research on the effect of the GOTV
message is often inconclusive. Likewise, political research has only recently begun to
consider the role of individual differences, especially personality, as a predictor of
political behavior. Traditionally, individual differences have been treated as “noise” in
the context of political research. There are indications, however, that far from being
noise, individual differences in general, and personality in particular, are vital
considerations and effective predictors of civic engagement (Mondak, Hibbing, Canache,
Seligson, & Anderson, 2010), partisanship (Mondak & Halperin, 2008), and political
orientation (Verhulst, Hatemi, & Martin, 2010) among potential voters. The results of this study reveal that response to some types of GOTV messages
can be modeled using variation in personality traits as a predictor. This is consistent with
some earlier findings suggesting systematic variation in political behavior and affiliation
associated with variation in personality traits. Furthermore, this study reveals that
different types of appeal content do indeed differ significantly in their perceived
effectiveness. The study has implications for how GOTV campaigns can be conducted in
order to differentially benefit candidates of differing ideologies.